The National Rifle Association has come under fire over allegations of excessive spending by top executives.
According to a new report from The Washington Post, the NRA's longtime chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, attempted to have the organization fund the purchase of a $6 million luxury Texas mansion last year after a deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. LaPierre told associates he was worried about being targeted and needed a more secure place to live after 17 people were fatally gunned down at the school.
The discussions related to the lavish property, which was not ultimately purchased, are now under scrutiny by the New York attorney general's office as part of its ongoing investigation into the organization's tax-exempt status.
Speaking with WaPo, Daniel Kurtz, head of Pryor Cashman's Nonprofit + Tax-Exempt Organizations practice, said such a home purchase could have violated New York charity law, which requires all transactions benefiting the group's insiders to be "fair, reasonable and in the corporation's best interest."
"There's no way they could defend a $6 million house for the chief executive as reasonable," Kurtz said. "This is like the worst kind of corporate waste because buying the house does nothing to advance the interests of the NRA. How can you explain that? It's not like he's been underpaid."
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